- This event has passed.
CIC Prince George: Hybrid/Zoom – Drugs, Security, and Tariffs in Mexico
Tune in Friday February 28 at 12:00 pm Pacific
Where: On Zoom and in person at University of Northern BC (room 7-152)
ID: 650 4683 3582
Password: 225953
Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown will lay out the collapse of security in Mexico over the past six years and the expansion of power of Mexican criminal groups. Mexican cartels are controlling ever larger portions of Mexico’s territory, people, legal economies (not just illegal ones), and institutions, exerting ever larger power over Mexico’s elections as well as expanding internationally across Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Canada. She will discuss how the Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador administration enabled this power expansion through its hugs-not-bullets approach to criminality in Mexico, despite the significant growth of militarization of all public policy in Mexico. She will then lay out the security strategy of the current Mexican government led by President Claudia Sheinbaum and the various plans of the Trump administrations, including the threats of a 25% tariff on Mexico,the designation of Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, and U.S. unilateral military actions into Mexico as well as implication for the upcoming review of USMCA.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER:
Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors. She is also the co-director of the Africa Security Initiative and the Brookings series on opioids: “The Opioid Crisis in America: Domestic and International Dimensions. Previously, she was the co-director of the Brookings project, “Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives Beyond UNGASS 2016,” as well as of another Brookings project, “Reconstituting Local Orders.” Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Namibia, Niger, and Nigeria. She was a senior advisor to the congressionally-mandated Afghanistan Peace Process Study Group.
Co sponsored with Faculty of Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities, Canadian International Council, UNBC Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, UNBC Department of Political Science, and UNBC Wildlife Club
Saskatoon Club 
